PRESENTED ARTISTS

Ian Davenport · Giardini

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Ian Davenport Collaborates with Swatch at La Biennale

Extending over 3.8 meters tall and 14 meters wide, Ian Davenport's "Giardini Colourfall" is a bold and Swatchy design at an exceptional scale. To create this colorful and highly impactful work, Davenport covered an aluminum panel with a structured sequence of more than 1,000 vertical lines of color. Poured from top to bottom, each chromatic column gives the viewer the impression they are looking at a waterfall of color, which eventually pools together in swirling designs at the base.

The impressive outdoor installation is part of the Swatch Faces 2017 exhibition that will be displayed in Venice's Giardini pavilion from Saturday, May 13th to Sunday, November 26th 2017.

To complement the exhibition, Davenport collaborated with Swatch on a limited and numbered (1,966 pieces) Swatch Art Special watch, WIDE ACRES OF TIME (SUOZ269S). Transitioning from the large-scale outdoor installation to “the world’s smallest canvas,” Davenport said this about the watch project: “It takes my practice into a different place and really made me think about my next body of work." Given the watch's vibrant design, there's no doubt Davenport's forthcoming projects will be influenced by this exciting collaboration.

About the Artist

Born in 1966, British artist Ian Davenport is renowned for his colorful abstract paintings. Nominated for the Turner Prize in 1991 and awarded a prize in the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition in 1999, his work has been exhibited at a number of prestigious venues in the United Kingdom and abroad, in both solo and group shows. Previous large-scale installations include work for the Tate Triennial, Warwick University and the 48-meter long ‘Poured Lines: Southwark Street’. His work is also on prominent display in public collections.

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CÉDRIC VAN PARYS

WORK DESCRIPTION

In Shanghai Cédric Van Parys was struck by two key features of the city: its skyscrapers and its colonial history. He identified a series of strange sculptures built on top of skyscrapers in each of Shanghai’s municipal districts. The sculptures are monuments that incorporate a mix of stylistic elements from the architecture of the colonial period. At the same time they point to the incredible economic and financial development of the city over the last 25 years, to which the skyscrapers in Pudong testify today. For this installation the artist has isolated the monuments, which are unique to Shanghai, and presents them as scale models in an imaginary landscape. His point is to show that monuments can commemorate not just the past, but also progress. In the future, as the city continues to develop, new Monuments for Progress will arise.

BIO

Born in Belgium, Cédric Van Parys holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from Sint-Lucas Ghent and studied at Central Saint Martins, London. Hired as a researcher by the City of Rotterdam, he worked as an exhibition and stage designer for the 2014 International Venice Architecture Biennale and the 2015 Prada Fall-Winter Fashion Shows. After living and working in Shanghai as an artist and architect he recently started his own studio in Amsterdam, where he works at the interface of art and design.

RODAN KANE HART

WORK DESCRIPTION

The artist has assembled forty masks made from stainless steel with a polished mirror-like surface. Each work has been molded from classical Roman busts used for educational purposes and readily available at art stores in Shanghai, China; these works attempt to represent the proliferation of European artistic influences in China under colonialism, similarly found in his native South Africa. The title refers to the symbolic death of the west, suggesting that western ideas and artistic ideals are to be scrutinized. By mirroring viewers’ faces in the surface of each work the artist invites them to reflect on their history.

BIO

Rodan Kane Hart studied at Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg and Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town and continues to live and work in the two cities. Hart has shown his work in three solo exhibitions: “Structure” (2013), “Pattern Language” (2013) and “Forms (South/West)” (2014), further taking part in numerous group exhibitions. His sculptures, drawings, and photographs are held in multiple public and private collections in South Africa, Europe and Asia.

VIRGINIE LITZLER

WORK DESCRIPTION

In summer, warmth and pollution bring an intense rhythm to the 24 million inhabitants of Shanghai. Pedestrians, cyclists, drivers and a huge variety of vehicles cohabit small streets, giving them a traffic density similar to big avenues. On the Bund, concrete, marble, huge structures and large windows combine with the midday sun to create firm and solid geometries. The pedestrians are hidden behind their umbrellas or in the shade of plane trees. They do not disappear, however. They are walkers and dance between many histories and stories, at their own pace.

BIO

Virginie Litzler is a French artist currently based in Brussels. After completing her MFA at the École Nationale Supérieure Des Beaux Arts de Lyon (France, 2004), Virginie moved to London to continue her post-graduate studies at The Royal College of Art, where in 2006 she received her MA in Photography. She has since exhibited internationally and taught Photography and Fine Art at universities and workshops across the United Kingdom.

YUAN JINHUA

WORK DESCRIPTION

Yuan Jinhua has always found that painting with Chinese ink gives him great freedom. The horizontal lines in these 8 panels emerged while he was a resident artist at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel. Painting these works allowed him to express his feelings and state of mind at a particular moment in his life. The artist refers to the works as “meteorological” and to a continuous exchange between the microcosm of the artist’s body and the grand macrocosm of nature. His art is a natural expression of the body and brush moving together in time. His desire is to escape the mundane and to fly the soul in the mountains and water, feeling moods changing and time shifting, discovering the poetry deep within his heart.

BIO

Born in Hangzhou, China, Yuan Jinhua earned his B.A. and Ph.D. from the China Academy of Art. Today he works at the Zhejiang Painting Institute as a full-time artist and director of the Figure Painting Studio. He has exhibited in China, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and the United States and curated "In Sequence", an exhibition of contemporary Chinese ink art shown in Hangzhou, Shanghai and Singapore.

To complement Ian Davenport's large-scale exhibition at La Biennale, the British contemporary artist also designed his own limited and numbered (1,966 pieces) Swatch Art Special watch, WIDE ACRES OF TIME.

SWATCH ART PEACE HOTEL · SHANGHAI

FACES & TRACES

The Swatch Art Peace Hotel is an artist residency where individuals from around the world are invited to live and work on the Bund in Shanghai. Since the residency opened in 2011, over 250 artists from all creative disciplines have used the historical building's dynamic environment to discover their own languages of self-expression through art. To showcase the extensive range of projects understaken at the Hotel, all residents are asked to leave behind an artistic “trace” of their choice. Flip through the digital FACES & TRACES magazine to meet the artists and discover some of the most recent works completed at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel.